YOUTH HOMELESSNESS: EARLY INTERVENTION AND PREVENTION.(Review)

YOUTH HOMELESSNESS: EARLY INTERVENTION AND PREVENTION

Chris Chamberlain and David Mackenzie Sydney, Australian Centre for Equity Through Education, 1998, xvi, 207 pp., $27.00 (paperback).

For a number of years, youth homelessness has at times been the object of intense media attention. Following the release of Our Homeless Children (the Burdekin Report) in 1989, issues surrounding youth homelessness and `street kids' in particular have been widely reported. Prior to this, particularly in the 1960s to 1970s the number of homeless young people appears to have been small. Only in 1982, with the release of the Senate's Report on Homeless Youth, came recognition that youth homelessness was a social problem. Academic interest in homelessness had, prior to the release of the Burdekin Report, been rather sparse. In the post-Burdekin era, however, funding availability for research projects into youth homelessness increased and a plethora of articles began to appear in various social science journals.

Chamberlain and Mackenzie's book is based on a number of research projects beginning in 1990 with a group project for graduate students. The data from this project alerted the authors to the fact that many young people still at school (or of school age) fall within the population of homeless youth. …